A Taste for Dissonance
by euphorbic
Summary: In which Entreri takes a contract to assassinate a mage obsessed with voices and sound. Takes place after he joins Pook's guild. Cameo appearances: Dondon major and Regis very minor.
1. a taste for dissonance

Disclaimer: The recognizable characters in this fanfiction were created by R. A. Salvatore in association with the legal entity Wizards of the Coast, who owns relevant copyrights to additional Forgotten Realms material referred to herein. The characters are used without permission but no material profit of any kind is being made from the following work. WotC reserve rights to Forgotten Realms material, but all of the situations unique to this work of fan fiction are property of the writer.

_This fic spawned by: SPK, the band, not the mental patient terrorist group (truth; so much stranger than fiction), the letter G, Blixa Bargeld's voice, an obsessive need to explain Entreri's linguistic deficiency, and yet another impulse to write a weapon origin fic._

_a taste of dissonance_

The window was painted black, a fitting metaphor for the view into the owner's soul. He stood before it, a lean monument dedicated to physical and martial perfection, built on a foundation of callous self-interest. Artemis Entreri carried no sympathies for any creature alive, not even himself. His standards were harsh, bordering impossible and held to with enthusiasm and the harsher disappointments of his horror filled origins.

Behind him in the sparsely furnished room was no furniture of note. A bed of fine make and comfortable mattress had once dominated the quarters, but Entreri had no use for it and had baffled his new Pasha by having it taken out. An exquisitely carved desk had been in the study, standing on spindly legs. Entreri had sneered something about form over function and had pushed it into the hallway himself.

Decorative vases, paintings, wall hangings, window coverings and plush chairs had swiftly followed until Pasha Pook's new lieutenant was inhabiting two rooms with little more than hand woven silk rugs still covering the floor. As a replacement for the bed, Entreri purchased a simple wooden chair with tooled leather backing. The chair was sturdy and slightly less nondescript than the hardwood desk set he'd bought to replace the first.

The only thing in the room of interest, other than Entreri and the silk rugs, was the boyish figure of Dondon Tiggerwillies; street thief and con artist extraordinaire. At least he was quite happy to describe himself and his skills as such and while some of his street reputation came from shameless self-promotion, he wasn't far removed from the skills he claimed.

It was his exceeding regret that he had not been able to convince the superior officer of his many extraordinary talents until many long weeks _after_ the assassin had come into the guild. Like many other opportunistic members of Pook's guild, the young thief had immediately tried to befriend the cold-hearted assassin, mistaking the bizarre lack of materialism for humility or generosity.

Of the guild members who'd made that grievous mistake, Dondon had fared the best. He was intuitive enough to know when a bad situation was in the offing and had managed to abandon his avarice before he suffered broken fingers or the deadly man's permanent disdain. The human's disposition was of the type that never let go of a dislike once it was formed. Fortunately for Dondon, that easily earned irritation hadn't fully materialized before he'd abandoned his acquisitive ways.

"So, what was your answer to the letter?" Dondon asked quietly. He moved away from the doorway and hopped up to seat himself at Entreri's solid, yet aggressively unremarkable, desk. It was one of the only desks he'd ever come across that did not call his curious fingers to rifle through its contents. It didn't even appear to have any locks or other security; the owner's reputation was more than enough to protect the contents. Not that Dondon could imagine Entreri keeping anything more remarkable than writing supplies, accounts, and conventional wealth within it. The real wealth was carried everywhere Entreri went; contained in the man's reflexes and inhuman accuracy.

"I accepted," came Entreri's voice, reflected from the black window he still faced. "The retainer alone is enough to pay for my services. He must be very frightened and desperate."

The young halfling nodded, knowing the assassin would catch the movement from the corner of his eye or, perhaps, his sharp sense of movement. "The one never strays far from the other. At any rate, I thought the challenge might interest you, for all it seems a difficult operation. Even though the wizard is from Baldur's Gate, he's a guild ally, so there is little chance of betrayal."

At the halfling's mention of betrayal, Entreri turned slightly to look over his shoulder, reaching out to touch Dondon with the strength of his gaze. "I am only ever betrayed once; Oberon will not fail to honor his promise."

A shudder threatened the charismatic halfling in the face of the killer's stare. With what strength of will he had, which was admittedly little, Dondon resisted shaking, but could not ward off the prickle of gooseflesh that rose on the back of his neck. Artemis Entreri was an unsettling man, even when he wasn't interested in slitting your throat from ear to ear.

"If you're telling me anything about it, it can only mean you're out for information. And since you were kind enough to hint at the size of the retainer fee, I'm free to speculate an exorbitant price for my services." Dondon replied, blowing a sigh up to move his bangs from over his childishly large eyes. His claim to a fee for the information was more jest than anything else, a fact they both knew. The young halfling was always happy to be of assistance to the hardened killer; it was his very own formidable armor on Calimport's ravenous streets. "Do you want to talk here or should we meet at the Copper Ante?"

The assassin turned fully to regard his half-sized ally. His rooms were warded from prying eyes by Pook's wizard, a useful man by the name of LaValle. Though he had seemed awkward and harassed by Entreri's entry into the guild, his attitude had grown accommodating when the killer had come to him for information on area mages. His fears that the new lieutenant could be a powerful rival were tempered by the reality that Entreri was willing to trade information and services on equal footing. With that knowledge, the assassin did not doubt the safety of speaking about delicate matters within his quarters.

"It is safe to speak here," he remarked. "Or do you have an ulterior motive in going to the Copper Ante? You aren't the best hand I've seen at that house."

Dondon's face contorted in an expression of deep hurt that was made all the more convincing for the grain of truth at its heart. "Master Entreri," he exclaimed with feeling, "you wound me! If you think my skills at dicing or cards are so bad, I certainly request your advice in improving."

Beneath the inexpressive façade Entreri held, the assassin was amused by Dondon's response. Apparently he had guessed correctly; not that it was such a difficult call to make. The mischievous wretch's penchant for gambling was well-known. "Contact me when you gather the information I need; layout, defenses, and the like. If you have trouble with any sources, provide me their names and haunts and I'll ensure their helpfulness."

A grimace flitted across Dondon's child-like features at the man's last comment. He'd witnessed Entreri's brutal tactics in prodding an unwilling informant to become more helpful. The halfling was not opposed to those avenues, but he'd been unaccountably squeamish when it came to seeing them played out before his wide eyes.

Climbing down from the desk's chair, the small thief straightened his clothes and glanced at the assassin. Entreri's blank stare was on him, but he'd been around the man long enough to sense that it was not actually directed at him. In answer to his musings, Entreri abruptly reached for the coin purse he kept at the small of his back and withdrew another, smaller, purse. He neither weighed it in his hand nor loosened its ties to judge its contents.

In his usual balanced grace, the man tossed the bag to Dondon, who in his own effortless skill, seemed to do no more than guide it into his half-sized cloak. The halfling was delighted to discover that it had a very pleasing weight.

"To cover your expenses," Entreri explained. "Don't waste it at dice until you are done securing the information."

A wide grin bloomed on the halfling's face, brightening his deceptively innocent face. "Waste it? Why, sir, I plan to invest it!"

Entreri brushed his hand in a dismissive gesture, effectively ending Dondon's commentary and any more conversation, while simultaneously leaving the impression that he didn't give the thief's comment even passing credit.

Dondon read the gesture as the overall dismissal it was and headed for the door that led to the hall beyond. Try as he might, the halfling couldn't tell if the assassin was following him or not. Thinking it was to assume the dangerous man was there, he proceeded without looking over his shoulder. Despite the thief's wariness, he was still surprised when Entreri reached over him to pull the door open. He was less shocked when the door shut silently behind him.

Alone, as he preferred, the assassin contemplated the coming challenge; he was impatient to get things underway. It would be the only impatience he would succumb to, for he approached every job with the extreme professionalism that carried his name far out of Calimport, even beyond the borders of Calimshan. Despite his relative youth and unimpressive height, Artemis Entreri had pushed himself to the height of physical and martial perfection, spurred by an obsessive need to control every aspect of his destiny and surrounding circumstances.

The results of his efforts were not lost on the city's denizens; Entreri was an undisputed prince of the underworld. Respect and fear were demanded and freely given by even the highborn and otherwise wealthy. These were the things he'd desired since he'd crawled out of the mud and dust of obscurity, since he'd fled so very far away from the deeply buried past left in the city of his birth. These days, the deadly man never gave a moment's thought to the young boy who'd been betrayed by every person he should have been able to rely on. He didn't even wonder if those people had fled Memnon with the rise of his infamy. There were too many other, murderous, things on his mind to recall what he deemed his useless past.

It was well beyond two weeks after Entreri had sent his halfling ally out to collect intelligence on his latest mark and he had set about gathering his own. The assassin began processing the surprisingly large amount of nearly useless incidental information available. Apparently Terthus Koedrobo suffered from the typical maladies Entreri associated with mages. There was the desert tower, the endless volumes of published research, which flew in the face of the jealously guarded solitude, and the reputation for eccentricity. The only thing outside the norm was his field of study.

Terthus was known for his obsession for collecting voices and sounds. Spellsingers, bards, and musicians feared him with unparalleled dread. Most mages also held the man in terror as they relied heavily on spells that were almost exclusively equipped with spoken components. All of which meant the mage had victimized far more individuals than Entreri had first suspected.

The assassin found himself drawing an obvious conclusion: many killers before him had tried to take the voice thief and had failed or they had simply turned down the offered contract. This logical extrapolation only fed Entreri's interest all the more. It was the only thing that had gotten him through a score of Terthus' publications on the character and properties of sound.

It came of particular note that all the voice thief's texts were available only in Calishite rather than the widely understood common parlance. Not that the assassin would complain; he'd only learned to read and write the common tongue when he'd joined the Basadoni Guild. Reading Calishite came much more naturally to Pasha Pook's lieutenant.

Despite the text's use of Calishite, Entreri had found he still needed to avail himself to LaValle's stock of esoteric dictionaries in order to understand most of what was written. The house wizard had been thoroughly baffled when the assassin had borrowed the heavy texts; he half wondered if they would be used as innocuous implements of death.

Earlier in his studies, Entreri had also noted the likelihood of the dictionaries and acoustical texts being used in an unlikely assault. The difference in Entreri's assumption was that continued exposure to the books' contents would eventually confound his mind completely. When he finally decided he had some inkling of his mark's personality from the writings, he stacked both sets of texts together and double tied them for eventual return to LaValle. Surely LaValle, like any magic user, wouldn't object to his books being returned with interest.

After setting the books aside, Entreri unlooped his weapon belt from wear it hung off his leather backed chair and crossed it over his narrow hips. He fastened the belt's hardware and adjusted it so his mismatched daggers each jutted out slightly, ready to be seized in the hands familiar to them.

The blades were of different makes and design; one was a curved affair that resembled the blades he carried in Basadoni's guild. It was of finer materials, balanced perfectly to a slender hand that had less maturing to do. The other blade was long and straight, suited to blocking and stabbing. It was a more stunning affair of simple design, with a large peridot, the size of a quail's egg, set in the pommel's aft. A spoil of a previous battle, it had been modified and balanced to his specifications.

Both weapons wore minor enchantments that enabled them to cut through magical fields that came naturally to many magical creatures, while adding an extra kick to any wounds they might inflict. Entreri did not mind this magical bonus; it was a benefit he could control. Their magic wasn't comparable to the coveted Charon's Claw, but they would do until he finally had the veritable dragon's hoard he supposed it would take to purchase the sword and gauntlet combination.

Taking his cloak in hand, the skilled killer shrouded himself to make a trip to collect what could be the last pieces of the puzzle he would find. Donning his cloak, Entreri only paused to set a few token traps on his door before taking his leave. There wasn't a thief in the building that had the nerve to trespass and any that did would be unnerved to find only the most obvious defenses. Entreri did not trust the thieves in his guild so much as their fear of his rightly deserved reputation.

The confidence propelling his dancer's gait was hardly assumed. Furtive glances followed Entreri as he strode through the guild house, confirming the continued safety of his rooms. Even the lieutenant's allies knew to keep the deadly man in sight.

Clearing the guild house, Entreri immediately took to Calimport's wretched shadows and stinking alleys. It was his way to take random routes to his destinations, only very occasionally taking the same way twice in a row in keeping with that unpredictability. He attributed this tactic to good sense and too many associations with guild diviners.

In the night, Calimport's shadows were never too vague for any manner of evil thing to hide within. But even the more bloodthirsty denizens of those shadows melted away from the assassin in his natural habitat. He navigated the darkness as precisely, stirring neither drunk nor predator.

His path took him up walls, along roof tops, through deadly streets and finally to the waiting door of the halfling establishment, the Copper Ante. Inside the halfling run establishment a riot of sound and bustling activity was the chaotic norm. The lighting was sufficiently low, to keep new comers from off the streets from becoming blinded; an arrangement that happened to aid the rampant cheating across every board. Cheating was just another part of the game.

As in the guild house, the denizens of the house knew well enough to keep an eye on the man after his dark entry, especially those that had known him in Basadoni as well the ones that shared his current allegiance. Their was a brief decrease in volume as the man entered, unreadable eyes quickly taking stock of the occupants and their multiplicities of activity. He saw no potential rivals or guild enemies and so moved further into the room.

Entreri marked the sudden lull in conversation as proof of the respect his presence commanded. The reaction was one of the few things that pleased the man in a life devoid of true happiness. The respect and fear paid him had long since lost the glow of newness, but it rarely failed to satisfy him.

At one of the far tables, two small hands were raised toward him in greeting. Entreri didn't need the two small ones to guide him, both were merely garnering the bragging rights of treating the city's most deadly assassin as familiarly as they dared. And while Entreri often allowed the pretense from one, his lifeless gray eyes narrowed at the other.

Dondon smirked at the halfling to his right while waving good-bye to a pouting girl on his left. Though he was the pasha's favorite thief, Regis hadn't found the precarious pathway to Entreri's minute good side. The wily halfling let his arm wilt down to his side. "How ever did you charm that one?" He whispered as the killer approached.

Dondon's smirk didn't lose its self-satisfied intensity. "That would be one of my closely guarded secrets, my friend. And certainly not as profitable a secret as the one that endears you to Pasha Pook!"

"I'm sure that your friend's goodwill was not the result of dumb luck mine was." The other smirked back, his eyes turning quite merry with fake humility; they both understood the compliments for the caveats they were.

When Entreri arrived at the table he didn't bother greeting either halfling, though he did release the Pasha's favored thief from his glare. "What is he doing here?"

"Gambling," the boyish halflings replied as one. They looked at each other with a start before breaking into short-lived chuckles. If any other man had been at their table, the laughter would have lasted much longer.

Dondon stifled his mirth at Entreri's grim face and explained quickly. "We were both here at the same time and it would have been odd for me to avoid such a good friend."

"And now that I am sure Dondon won't be alone," Regis hastened to add, "I'll be joining another table. Besides, my friend's ocean of wealth seems to be at low tide and I should take the opportunity to find new waves to sail."

Nodding mournfully, Dondon built on Regis' more accurate account. "Tonight has not been very good for increasing my wealth, but surely tomorrow the tide will turn and my pockets will be full, while the unwary soul's will ebb."

The lively exchange between halflings always seemed wasteful to Entreri, though he knew the value in their verbal skills. It was an extension of their undeniable charm; a charm that normally had an adverse affect on a man with no interest in small talk. While Regis was one of the undisputed con artists of the street, having attained high favor with Pasha Pook, it was Dondon's ability to be reserved that had gained him Entreri's favor. Dondon was highly aware when to put the brakes on his loquaciousness when it came to the assassin.

The skilled assassin did not so much as acknowledge the halflings' conversation with a gesture of dismissal. His flat gaze was as eloquent as he was inclined to be when his irritation was rising. There was work to be done and continued banter was getting in the way. He did not understand that his frightening demeanor usually flustered creatures that relied heavily on the gift of the gab.

Young as he was, and used to enjoying Pasha Pook's patronage, Regis had yet to figure out what kind of tactics would best manipulate the guild's new lieutenant. He left the table, babbling slightly and confused.

Dondon watched his gambling companion go and sighed. Regis was an excellent ally, if one kept in mind, that like most thieves and con artists, he had a habit of encroaching on his friends' goodwill. In fact, Dondon recognized this same attribute in himself, but hadn't the conscience required to find anything wrong with it. Having no goodwill to speak of, Entreri wasn't at risk from this habit, nor would he be if the halfing had sensed any amount of kindness in the man; the promise of death put a damper on self-aggrandizement.

"Must you be so…" the halfling grasped momentarily for a term the killer would not deem insulting, "…intimidating?"

Entreri glanced at his short associate, amused in spite of himself. "Don't be ridiculous."

The thief sighed and shrugged in response, hoping his question had lightened his deadly ally's mood. "Well, then, I have a room rented for our business. Let's get that out of the way so there will still be remnants of the night to enjoy."

The two left the bustling activity and low roar of the Copper Ante's gambling tables and headed for the establishment's reputation maker. While the place was named appropriately for a gambling house, it was the Ante's private rooms that drew Calimport's most exclusive clientele. The rooms were known for their imperviousness to eavesdropping of any kind, whether magical, psionic, or physical. There was simply no way, short of ripping the place apart, to listen in on conversations that took place under the Copper Ante's formidable protection.

It wasn't until they were seated within one of those dark rooms that Dondon felt safe enough to begin disclosing the details he'd worked hard to procure for the deadly assassin. From underneath his cloak he produced a small packet of folded papers and set them on the table between them.

"In keeping with that retainer you mentioned the other week," the small thief began, "this was one of the hardest jobs I've been on. Nobody wants to talk about Koedrobo the Voice Thief! Sure, they'll give their opinions and speculations in normal conversation, but if they think you've got more than a passing interest in mind their mouths snap tighter than a Sword Coast clam."

Entreri put on a bored expression, assuming Dondon was playing up his normal theatrics. "But Dondon's skilled tongue never allowed his conversation partners to grow suspicious. Correct?"

Unperturbed by the assassin's impatience with his storytelling, Dondon shrugged. He was reasonably sure his next pronouncement would be worth the price he paid for it. "It is practically impossible to get a layout of a wizard's tower without giving rise to suspicions, Master Entreri."

Having failed to squeeze much useful information about the wizard from his own formidable network, Entreri was momentarily surprised. To confirm the halflings statement, the assassin reached out and took the folded papers. As he unfolded them, he discovered the truth to the implied assertion. There was no telling how much the edifice had changed since its construction over a century prior, but the plans would still be valuable for formulating entry and exit contingencies.

Dondon beamed with self-indulgent satisfaction as he watched Entreri scan the documents without uttering a word in praise or censure. He took the assassin's intense interest as the high flattery it was. When Entreri finally did look up from the unexpected treasure, a trace of a wicked smirk was pulling at the corner of his inexpressive lips.

"You've outdone yourself, Tiggerwillies." Entreri was honestly impressed with his small ally's achievement, but there was something in the halfling's statement that he couldn't leave unaddressed. "You said it was practically impossible to get something like this without raising suspicions. Did you?"

A flash of warning stabbed the halfling's heart at the killer's question and filled him with cold dread and uncharacteristic guilt. It was a split second of hesitation, but he saw Entreri's expression harden in that short time. He knew he would have to let on to truth or forever lose the benefits of the tentative alliance.

"I had help," he admitted, watching Entreri's face lose all expression. How he hated working with that blank slate. "Regis had the connection. I am good at what I do, but Regis is virtually without equal when it comes to his powers of persuasion! Without his help, there would be no map. I swear it!"

In response to Dondon's sudden confession, Entreri's scowl deepened. Knowing the other halfling, he would tell Pook about the incident in order to further cement the pasha's good graces. There were now three people other than the assassin and his client that knew of the contract. He could get away with killing all three eventually, but it wasn't in his favor to do so.

His pragmatic sensibilities required he exact no lasting punishment from Dondon for the slip in secrecy; the plans were of great value. The halfling was a valuable resource and he would not scuttle that avenue of information needlessly. Despite his ire, the assassin tallied the slips mentally and determined his small ally would be more careful in the future or reap the consequences. Artemis Entreri's allies never outlived their usefulness.

"How much did Regis ask for his services?" The assassin asked the question, but he could already imagine the answer.

Again, Dondon knew better than to answer with a convenient lie. "It was a favor between friends."

The assassin nodded; it was as he suspected. "I count none as my friend and am not involved in your exchange."

A nervous laugh escaped the thief. "I'm sure Regis is not so foolish as to think you would owe him for the favor. After all, I never told him who the plans were for."

"Regis isn't stupid," Entreri returned. "He will have put enough of the pieces together to make the connection. No matter; I'll see what comes of it."

Sufficiently chastened, Dondon nodded. He was sorry to lose the euphoric feeling of a job well-done, but hoped the map would be of enough use to the lieutenant that the incident regarding its procurement would fade in his memory.

"Most of what I've learned is with the plans," the little thief sighed, "but there were some points I thought you'd want to talk about. For instance, animals will not come near the tower; not even highly trained animals. In fact, by all accounts most sentient races find the area deeply unsettling. I've heard the uneasiness the place exudes is not a known spell, but one of Koedrobo's own devising. There have been curious mages that have warded themselves against magical fear and were still unable to venture far toward the tower."

Entreri nodded his understanding, but added nothing to the monologue; this was something he already knew and planned to discuss with LaValle under a different pretext. Having witnessed the eccentricities displayed in the man's writings, he felt confident the tower was protected by magical sound rather than any general fear spell.

"Everyone knows he steals voices and collects sound," Dondon continued, "but nobody really seems to know how he stores them. According to the source that supplied the map, Koedrobo keeps them in mysteriously labeled bottles."

Again the assassin nodded. "That confirms what I have from the letter. According to whoever was scrying for him, the bottles are labeled in a familiar, but one the scryer couldn't read."

"That's not very helpful," the pint-sized con artist drawled, rolling his eyes. "Mages are familiar with all kinds of writings. If they can't identify it, best not to mention much more than that. Who knows, perhaps Koedrobo writes names in musical notes."

Entreri stifled a sigh; he'd had to learn some complex mathematical theories to understand much of the wizard's texts. Now musical notation? This was a source of frustration for the assassin, who had not only been hired to kill the voice thief but retrieve several of the stolen voices. The bottle he was particularly after was reputed to be of northern crystal with a sinuously shaped blue glass stopper. If the collection was as vast as he was beginning to fear, there could be multiple bottles of the same description.

He wondered if LaValle had a tutorial on musical notation in Calishite in order to save a small amount of time and what the wizard might think of his sudden interest in such.

"One of the reasons he steals voices," Dondon continued, "beyond his field of study, comes from a failed experiment where he lost his own. Now he can only speak using the voices he's stolen."

This was more information Entreri knew from Oberon's letters. "What of his travel habits?"

"As for his comings and goings, past scryings indicate no set schedule to his outings to collect specimens or supplies. Apparently he makes great use of one of those carpets that used to be the rage ages ago, but he's also known to teleport. His visitors are exceedingly rare and he has no apprentices to speak of."

"What of defenses beyond the inexplicable source of fear?" The assassin was certain he wouldn't like the answer to this question either.

Dondon shook his head. "Unknown. No doors or windows on the lower levels; you might be forced to climb. Nothing ever seems to get that close."

"Excellent," Entreri remarked with bitter sarcasm. "Despite the map, I suppose my best option at this point is to show up below a window and demand his allegiance to the guild, payment of back duties, and several of his specimens as a cut of his action."

Though the halfling perfectly understood the assassin's sarcasm he tapped a forefinger to his lips in thought. "You know," he mused, "that's probably what I would do."

_

* * *

_

_A note on Entreri's language skills in this chapter: _

Throughout the books, Entreri has displayed perfectly good grammar. Inthe early books, he was shown to be intelligent and a remarkably quick study in regard to psychology and motivations. In short, we know he's literate and highly intelligent. However, after over five years he hasn't completely picked up Drow or drow sign, whereas Sharlotta picked up the language and made headway on the sign in less than a year. This bugs me, because it would lead me to assume Sharlotta was smarter than our assassin. Except Sharlotta received the flame job, not Entreri.

The only logical conclusion I can draw from this is that Sharlotta was introduced to foreign languages before she was about nine years old. Since we start losing our capacity to master foreign languages at nine years old, I'm assuming that Entreri left Memnon before he was schooled in 'Common' and that he could not learn it until he entered the guild. At fourteen, his capacity to learn a new language would be sufficiently degraded to make it difficult to learn anything new. But it still doesn't make complete sense, since he hates dependence and he was fully immersed in the language for a long time.


	2. dark entries

Disclaimer: The recognizable characters in this fanfiction were created by R. A. Salvatore in association with the legal entity Wizards of the Coast, who owns relevant copyrights to additional Forgotten Realms material referred to herein. The characters are used without permission but no material profit of any kind is being made from the following work. WotC reserve rights to Forgotten Realms material, but all of the situations unique to this work of fan fiction are property of the writer.

_dark entries_

After a blistering hot day of casing a sandstone tower, in a sandy desert, with wind blown sand leaving a fine layer of dust across his skin where his loose cloak and turban left off, the stubborn killer was entertaining the suggestion Dondon had left him with a day prior. He'd traversed the desert innumerable times on business for both Pook and Basadoni as well for the profession that made him famous. In those many journeys he'd never had the need, or desire, to dig into the inhospitable landscape and spend any amount of time in one place. All desert dwellers knew that to do so under normal circumstances was tantamount to suicide.

Over the hours of observation, Entreri kept track of the sun's travel across the pale sky, knowing there was less chance of being observed as soon as it was behind him. Not that he'd thought a chance for observation was likely; there had been little sign of living movement since he'd arrived. Nothing beyond the occasional insect had attracted the assassin's attention.

As for the reports of a feeling of debilitating uneasiness; Entreri had felt less fear and more tension. There was a disturbing quality to what he assumed was the air or ambience of the sandy wasteland that felt amazingly familiar to the assassin. Rather than unhinge him, Entreri found the oddly familiar feeling brought up irritation and anger. The closer he inched to the tower, the stronger the sensation became. His strong will kept him from acting on his growing irritation.

The sandstone tower was much like the reports and construction details Entreri had studied. A missing gateway was indicated on the maps that all firsthand observers claimed did not exist. It was the tower's placement, seeming to grow out of the desert's many shifting sand dunes which revealed the truth of the matter.

Over time the desert wind had reshaped the sand dunes and for many years one had flirted with overrunning the structure. The desert's mercurial sands surrounding the tower covered and uncovered the doorway in the space of hours. Entreri had seen half the vaulted gate when he'd arrived in the morning gloom, only to see it swallowed up to the elegantly carved eave.

Originally the assassin had planned to scale the wall and make an entry through the topmost gated windows, rather than the lower windows, which were more obvious points of entry. The appearance of the nearly covered lower doorway called him to consider altering his carefully considered plans.

There was no room for something as trite as love in Entreri's heart, the closest he came to that emotion was his obsession for complete independence. Coming in a close second was the extreme satisfaction of defeating all challenges. In achieving both goals, the assassin was often given to meticulous planning and calculations. In the unlikely event of an unseen calculation throwing his plans askew, Entreri was skilled in improvisation. As he considered the buried gate, he began to alter his previous plans.

There was a trick he'd seen performed by cons in Calimport he believed could carry him through the most unlikely of entries. Internally he allowed himself a short stab of amusement; who would have thought the entrance to a wizard's tower with the least potential alarms would be the front door?

An hour later, the setting sun signaled Entreri's stealthy approach under cover of the deep shadows the tower and closest sand dune provided. As he moved steadily closer to the stone edifice, the sense of tension and irritation that had been living under his skin the whole day intensified dramatically. Anger shot along his limbs in response and his heart rate began to increase. By the time he was thirty meters from the tower, Entreri became aware of a sound other than the wind whipping the sand across the desolate landscape: his teeth were grinding.

On the heels of his inexplicable irritation came impressions of many of the horrors he'd seen in his two decades of life. An incident of public execution, a guild member whose hand was removed on the second try, a leering man that seemed eerily familiar, several unwilling informants, and a multitude of other incidents; too many to sort through. All were unwanted and unprofessional things to be circulating through his mind on or off a job.

Snarling silently, the assassin knew he would either have to resort to impairing one of his most reliable senses or find himself doing something stupid. What kind of stupid, he didn't know, but he felt it would be something akin to suddenly throwing himself at the stone tower and unleashing unparalleled and senseless fury upon it. With his bare fists.

Moving quickly, Entreri withdrew a tiny paper-wrapped parcel from the folds of his cloak, and untwisted the ends. Inside was a malleable wax he'd specifically obtained for use against Koedrobo's discipline. He separated the distasteful substance into equal shares and tucked each half underneath his turban and into his ears. He tried not to think too closely where the wax had come from. There were no truly vile things that would stand between him and a mark.

The sensation rattling his nerves faded immediately after his ears were plugged. Entreri would have been relieved with the slow return of his professional cool, if the wax hadn't also stolen his acute hearing. His fine features set in grim expression under the desert headgear as he considered the unpleasant alternative: far better to impair his hearing than cripple himself in a frothing fit of rage.

The unnerving sensation that had assaulted him had almost completely dispersed with the blocking of his ears, but there remained a faint edge of tension outlining his thoughts. It wasn't strong enough to concern the assassin as he crossed the final few meters to the nearly buried gateway.

There were less than two meters of gate visible, making the locks at least a third of his height deep in sand. He wasn't entirely sure how far down he could make his trick work, but he supposed he could hold his breath long enough if the need arose. Crouching inside the unlikely shelter, sand drifting over his feet, Entreri unwound the long length of cloth wrapped around his head and shook it out. All such wrappings were constructed of lightfast and breathable materials to shield from the sun, but allow air in to cool the body; Entreri's was no different and the very thing he needed.

He made sure his set of lock picks were secured tightly against one wrist before further impairing his senses. This time, he draped the loose material over his face and tied it securely at the back of his head. He was not completely blind; the material was light, allowing him to see vague images and patches of light and dark. Where he planned to go, even that much was more than he needed.

Beginning to breathe calmly in preparation for holding his breath, Entreri placed his hands side by side and dove them into the loose sand. He found that working his hands in an undulating motion increased the speed in which his arms sank into the sand. Unconcerned with the ridiculousness of his appearance, the assassin ducked his head between his biceps. With his arms protectively smoothing the line of his head and displacing the sand about them, it wasn't as hard to sink into the sand as he thought it would be, though it became more difficult the deeper he went.

Filling his lungs to a careful capacity, Entreri brought his strong legs up and braced his feet against the bare shelter of the gate's stone frame. He pushed at the framework and succeeded in knifing down gradually into the sand, parallel to the disputed doors. As he descended he kept a careful mind of his sense of direction. He also took a cautious attempt at breathing and was rewarded with an intake of musty, yet breathable, air.

An uncharacteristic grin stretched across Entreri's swallowed features at the breath of air. He'd learned the trick years ago, watching a conman working crowd after crowd of religious pilgrims. The trickster had built up quite a racket by proclaiming himself in need of funds to start up churches dedicated to whatever deity the travelers professed to believe in.

To prove his sincerity, one of the pilgrims would be bid to dig a hole in the sand while the con covered his head with a bag 'to keep dirt out of his nose and mouth.' The pilgrims were then invited to hold him upside down, with his head in the hole, while another pilgrim filled the depression with sand. The conman could keep his head buried indefinitely without suffocating, proving himself touched by their deity. After they pulled him up, funds would flow into the man's deceitful pockets.

Implementing a trick used by men to take advantage of the religiously inclined appealed directly to Entreri's small, very dark, sense of humor.

By the time Entreri was deep enough, the trick's usefulness had ceased. There was too much pressure, the sand too tightly packed, for any amount of breathable air to be available to the assassin. This notion hardly disturbed the deadly man; he was used to holding his breath for long periods of time.

Working his hands slowly through the sand, Entreri easily found the doors. He spent a few heart beats locating the seam between the double doors and following them down to a large set of locks. Mentally, Entreri noted that if he was cautious, he would shortly be able to add another accomplishment to his private list of dangerous feats: unlocking a wizard's front door, while upside down, ears plugged, blind-folded, and buried in sand. He refused to contemplate what would happen should he make a mistake.

Entreri withdrew his lock picks and began to work over the gateway's many locks with careful precision. He was dismayed to find the sand also impaired his highly sensitive fingers. This was, perhaps, the greatest source of concern he'd considered before putting the unlikely plan into action. All thieves relied heavily on the information their fingers read from locks and traps. He found himself working in slow motion, which he inevitably began to calculate in terms of pressure from his lungs. It wouldn't be long until the dull ache beginning in his chest would transform into stabbing pain.

Calm in the face of possible death by suffocation, Entreri did not push himself to hurry and open himself up to the blunders that waited for the reckless. There was no need for worry; the door's locks were conventionally trapped, but sand had made poisoned needles ineffective and fouled an implement designed to break lock picks and the fingers that held them. Entreri was able to work all the large tumblers over and unlock the door without difficulty. If there were any wards on the gate, he believed sand had also worn them away long ago.

Lungs beginning to constrict in greater pain, the assassin grasped each door's handle and turned them up and out. The doors moved slowly inward, but the assassin immediately felt the rush of the sand around him as it began to pour into what the tower's plans had described as an antechamber. Working quickly, Entreri arched his legs over freely into the room and used the weight of the lower half of his body to right himself and pull his upper body out of the sand.

Entreri took a deep, gasping breath of air as he pulled the edge of his head covering over his dark eyes and plucked one of the pieces of wax from his ear. When his feet had hit the antechamber's floor, they had sunk into a thick layer of sand; now it was nearly up to his knees. He knew he would never be able to shut the gate again; not with tons of sand keeping them lodged open. Fortunately that had never been his plan.

Finding himself in a new race against time, Entreri uprooted his feet and raced to the antechamber's doors. He pressed his unplugged ear up against the door, listening for more than the sound of rushing sand. There was nothing, not even the sensation that had put him on edge outside the tower.

Sensing all was clear, the assassin turned his attention to the less imposing inner gates, which were lit by the fading light and darkening sky immediately behind him. These were also locked and trapped, but with no deceptive grains to muddy his tactile impressions, he made short work of locks and traps. He managed to open the door on the right and slip through with a minimum of sand before closing the inner door behind him and pitching himself into sudden blackness.

Despite the time his eyes had been covered and the shadowed dregs of the sun's setting light in the antechamber, Entreri was still adjusting from watching the tower and gleaming dunes most of the day. He instinctively sidled along a wall, leaving no footsteps on the sandy surface of the stone floor. Using his hands for eyes, to confirm what he had memorized as the ground level's layout, he slipped silently into the cobwebs of a darkened corner.

No light source made itself known while Entreri's eyes adjusted to the dimness. Losing his sense of vision didn't worry the assassin; he'd completed missions in the same circumstances. He was more uncomfortable with losing his hearing; a sense that more than made up for his eyes. In response to his blindness, he removed the other ear plug and slipped it into his clothing with the other. Hidden as he was, he also took an extra moment to untie the knot in his head scarf and wind it about his head and face again.

In the darkness he didn't have vision to encroach on his mind's eye image of the tower's interior; it was easy to lay his mental picture over his open eyes and navigate it. The sound and feel of sand, spanning far from his point of entry, told him the place was long unused. The musty scent of dry mold and dust confirmed his estimation. His outward senses and experience with blackened rooms kept him from bumping into any stray implements or carriage. It also kept him clear of any possible creature the wizard might have seeded the place with as a macabre security measure.

Gliding through the darkness, Entreri lost little time finding the central stair that spiraled up through the middle of the tower on its way to the topmost floor. He found the interior of the staircase significantly more used. The locked door leading into the tower's subterranean cellars was cold under his questing fingertips and without cobwebs on the iron rung that would pull it open. A quick investigation of the lock revealed no traps, convincing the assassin the door was designed to keep something within rather than keeping an intruder from stealing down.

An assassin rather than a treasure hunter, Entreri left the door locked. As he advanced up the stairs away from it, he considered unlocking it as a possible contingency, but decided against alerting the mage too soon. Besides, he was not convinced he would need such unreliable, possibly nonexistent, back up.

As he ascended the tight spiral he counted the many landings he passed. He noted the vague light entering the higher floors from the windows he had decided to bypass. It was not yet full dark, but the desert's eerie scene of orange dunes and indigo sky. If Entreri wasn't a man apt to deny beauty, the haze might have stilled him in his journey.

Halfway up the tower, the shadowy shape of Artemis Entreri paused; a faint sound had begun from the floor above him as well as the floor below. The assassin tensed, assuming for an instant he had triggered a security measure he had failed to sense. He brushed the notion away as quickly as it arrived, noting the almost imperceptible vibration of the stone stairs he had traversed. The sound, he reasoned, was the myriad voices of whatever materials would react to the low vibration. Glass, loose metal implements, any number of household items or wizardly materials would react audibly to the fine shuddering of stone.

Entreri's hand stole into the folds of his clothing and withdrew the wax pieces again. He was loath to steal away his hearing, but the vibration of the structure meant the mage was casting. Of course, he reasoned, if the mage was casting, it also meant he was depleting his stores of spells. In addition, experimentation meant the man was also secure in his solitude and unlikely to be equipped with spells needed to defend against a home invasion.

In the end, Entreri slipped one piece into his sleeve for easy retrieval and the other into his left ear. He continued up the stairs, leading with his right side, concentrating on the growing noise and vibration as he traveled further up the staircase.

After several more full revolutions within the spiral, Entreri was again clenching his jaw. This time he was defending against the rattling strength of the vibration, which was accompanied by a dull hum and a source of light. The hum, Entreri noted, as he made what he knew was his final approach on the stairs was probably the audible source of the annoying vibration.

Any noise the deadly assassin made while traversing the last few stairs, which he was certain was inaudible under normal circumstances, was completely swallowed up by the continued noise emanating beyond the landing. He was surprised to see no door had been installed on the landing to ward against unwanted intrusion. Taking advantage of the oversight, Entreri squinted against the floor's dim light to take measure of the interior.

Contrary to many of his previous marks, the room was neither embarrassingly cluttered and disorganized nor strewn artfully with expensive furnishings. What he found was the workroom of a highly, possibly obsessively, organized wizard. The light was not the typical firelight he was used to, but a clean white light that came from strategically placed points around the room. Light also filtered in from several evenly placed, and gated, windows spanning the outer wall.

Work benches of various designs and materials were arranged in neat ranks, far ends radiating out from the outer walls. There were few implements or obvious works in progress on the tables. Entreri did note more than one bench fitted with axles that would allow the platform to be tilted: the same ones were fitted with a variety of manacles with serrated edges meant to dissuade an unwilling participant from struggling.

Of most interest to the hired killer were the glass cases lining what he could see of the curved outer wall. There were two such cases on either side of every gated window. He bit back an urge to grind his teeth when he realized the glass cases held shelf after shelf of crystal bottles. Three of the cases held nothing but bottles topped with the blue stoppers he was looking for.

It looked like the assassin would be providing Pook's guild an interesting, and brief, sideline in voice fencing. How many people would be happy to pay an exorbitant fee to get their voices back? There were enough creative minds in the guild to decode the labels and plan the ransom. It was a plan that appealed to the cunning assassin's mind more than shipping all the fragile bottles to Baldur's Gate.

When the vibration and noise faded away, Entreri took another look into the room. He hadn't seen his mark yet and assumed the man was on the opposite side of the room, on the other side of the staircase's solid wall. Trying to place the mage, he backed down the stairs until he was against the lower half of the room's inner wall. Sly fingers felt the stone for other vibrations or clues. With no tactile clues forthcoming, he cautiously placed his unplugged ear near the wall and listened intently for information on the mage's location.

At first, the skilled assassin heard nothing, but then he heard the faint strains of a woman's voice. He scowled at this new bit of information and pulled away from the stone. Either the mage had a visitor or a prisoner. Entreri, of course, had no compunctions about killing both if needed. The more eccentric the wizard, he thought, the more complications cropped up.

Placing the wizard in his mental map, Entreri returned to the doorway. He took note of the edges for wards or evidence of powerful sigils and found none. Entreri's ample experience with breaking and entering was more than up to the task of discerning most, if not all, protections against entry. What concerned him was the mage's dedication to his unique discipline.

Absolute self confidence, rather than blinding pride, led the assassin into the room after slipping a loose thread into the breach before him. He reasoned that sound-based defenses would affect inanimate objects in the same way it would interact with animated ones. From inside the room he saw the wall next to him was also lined with glass cases, the closest held bottles with green stoppers. As he moved further away from the doorway, he could see the interior floor plan had been significantly altered.

All the walls previously separating the floor into rooms had been knocked out save two situated far from the stairwell's entry. Entreri assumed the walls were evidence of a single workroom where Terthus performed his more sensitive experiments and dangerous castings. There was, again, only one entry to the room and it was the assassin's plan to lie in wait, perched above the door, daggers at the ready. As always, the entries were always more work than the actual killing.

Well lit and filled with glass, the work room was not the optimal habitat for an assassin, but Entreri was a master of his dark trade despite his youth; and he wasn't one of the top paid killers in Calimshan without good reason. Entreri made good on every shadow and visual block the many workbenches provided him. He moved quickly and with assurance, making swift gains toward the door.

Unfortunately, fate was what the assassin liked to regard as a harsh taskmaster. When Entreri heard the door latch, he ducked out of sight, finding himself still too far away from the door to make an effective surprise attack. As a precaution, he slipped the other half of wax into his unplugged ear and monitored the wizard's entrance by watching the reflections cast on the glass cases and other reflective surfaces throughout the work room.

From his vantage behind a black workbench, Entreri could see the man paused, his hand still on the door. Terthus, for he perfectly fit the clean shaven image the assassin had been given, was looking down at the latch, his lips moving as he gazed at the surface. In a world of perfect silence, Entreri couldn't tell if the man was casting a spell to protect the work room, talking to the woman still within, or exhibiting a wizardly tendency to talk to himself. With his head turned down and to the side, Entreri couldn't read his lips. In any case, the patient killer did not breathe nor move a muscle. All he heard was the quiet beat of his own heart.

As utterly motionless as he was, it came as a surprise when the mage suddenly released the latch of the door and looked immediately in Entreri's direction. Forgetting his surprise, he seized the mage's shock and ran on instinct.

Alive and full of motion, the assassin opted for a visible assault to further drive the mage's shock home. With a half score of workbenches between him and his target, Entreri found the fastest route would be one that used them to his advantage. He vaulted on top of the one he used as cover and raced across it, leaping to the following ones without missing stride, scattering the few with implements in an effort to further distract the mage with violent sound.

Initially his plan seemed to work; Terthus flinched visibly when the assassin rushed over the top of the first workbench. He flinched, too, every time metal implements scattered across workbenches and struck the floor. However, he was also working his mouth in what Entreri knew to be a casting and raising his hands to complete a physical component of some kind.

Far from worried by the wizard's actions, Entreri concentrated on the man's timing. He knew the spell would go off before he could make his attack; the trick was to get close enough to make his move before the mage could get his second casting together.

Just as the intensely concentrating man's hands began to fly out toward Entreri, the wily assassin dropped down behind the workbench closest to the mage. In most situations, the desk would have been ample cover; no mage wanted to fill his workroom with bolts of lightning or devastating fireballs. The worst he expected was the annoyingly unerring flight of burning magic missiles to slam into his body as he flew around the side of the workbench to finish his deadly drive.

The assassin was not surprised to discover Terthus' attack was unconventional, even if didn't expect what came. A wave of punishing force traveled through the desk, without affecting it in the slightest, but hit the killer with murderous strength. The impact was so violent as it moved through Entreri that it knocked him off his feet and propelled him brutally into the workbench behind him.

Instinct alone launched the assassin's arms protectively around his head, saving him from unconsciousness but not from becoming temporarily stunned. He knew he had very little time to get to his feet and make his final assault on the mage. There was no time for the room to spin chaotically around his head. It was his iron will alone that forced him to his feet, even though there was little air to speak of in his lungs and a worrying feeling of broken bones scraping together in his torso.

Terthus was shocked again by the assassin's rapid recovery, but he was already mouthing another spell and Entreri imagined the movements of his lips looked disturbingly similar to the first casting. Adrenaline spurred the assassin on, heightening his already remarkable speed in a moment that was all or nothing. The daggers were out of their sheathes and whipped up in mere silver blurs as the assassin leapt at the wizard.

Right before Entreri swept his arms down in a glittering arc of death, Terthus' arms propelled toward the assassin. The assassin was so close to the mage when the spell went off, one dagger sliced neatly through his lip, while Terthus' fingertips tangled momentarily in the folds of Entreri's clothing.

The impact seemed far more serious at such a close proximity. The wave traveled through his entire body, throwing him backwards as it had before. It felt like his whole body was vibrating and bruising as it passed through him, forcing him along in its wake, until he crashed against the closest work surface. He had farther to be flung this time, but still barely managed to protect his head in time. It was of little help.


	3. hidden voices

Disclaimer: The recognizable characters in this fanfiction were created by R. A. Salvatore in association with the legal entity Wizards of the Coast, who owns relevant copyrights to additional Forgotten Realms material referred to herein. The characters are used without permission but no material profit of any kind is being made from the following work. WotC reserve rights to Forgotten Realms material, but all characters and situations unique to this work of fan fiction are property of the writer.

_AN: inspired, in part, by an LE local, but for somebody I've lost contact with._

_hidden voices_

Pain was nothing new to Entreri, for all it was blooming from every corner of his bludgeoned and battered form. Under his clothing, his skin was turning into a cartographer's nightmare; a landscape of broken capillaries, growing kingdoms of bruising, ribs pulled free from their cartilage homes formed unsteady elevated ridges. Stubborn and willful to the bitterest of ends, Entreri willed his trembling arms underneath his torso and started to lift himself up.

He'd lost his hold on his slashing dagger, but he didn't need two blades to slit open a wizard's belly. All he needed was a little strength and a little more time before the next casting.

The assassin ignored the faint voice of dismay within his mind when he heard a woman's melodious voice beginning another casting. The woman. He'd hoped to kill the wizard and be gone before she would prove herself prisoner or ally. A sudden question stabbed into his mind with further gravity. Why did he hear her? Unless the collision had been hard enough to knock one of the expensive pieces of wax out of his ear.

The torturous and slow journey from his prone position on the floor to balancing unsteadily on shaky hands and knees left Entreri without energy to contemplate the loss of one of the halves of wax. Instead, he rocked his body back, freeing his hands but leaving him still on his knees. Thankfully he had the straight dagger, which was far more suited to a throw. He swiveled his torso to face the mark, bemused by the man making a final gesture toward him. Where was the woman?

Another surge of adrenaline brought Entreri's arm up for a throw, but as injured as he was, he could not outrace the incoming spell. The spell did not make any alarming noises, except a popping noise in the assassin's unplugged ear followed by a sudden stabbing pain deep within the canal.

To Entreri's utter astonishment, the room suddenly spun crazily out of control. His arms shot out to steady him, but the motion only took the world further out of his control. Instead of steadying him, his attempt at finding equilibrium threw him sideways onto the stone floor. Worse still, though he swore he could not be moving, cheek pressing painfully into the floor as it was, the room was still wildly beyond his ability to grasp. Entreri forgot completely the hideous pain wracking his body, the bizarre throbbing in his ear: no matter how he tried, he could not stop the spinning!

When the mage grasped the hand still clutching the dagger, Entreri snarled ferociously and stabbed at where he thought Terthus would have to be. The dagger connected with nothing, came nowhere near the man pulling his arm up and, by extension, pulling the assassin's torso off the floor.

"Shhh, I shan't kill you yet." For all Entreri was helpless to look directly at the mage, the voice revealed a feature the assassin found ridiculously obvious. Terthus was the woman. Or, rather, his voice was.

The young assassin, struggling more out of pride than good sense, continued to wrest his hand out of the mage's warm grip. He knew he was far stronger than the mage, but the loss of his equilibrium made the chore pointless. When he felt his wrist encounter what seemed to be cold metal, Entreri tried instead to use his body weight against Terthus.

Rather than struggle, Entreri relied on gravity to do his work for him. The assassin went suddenly limp, letting the dead weight do what he could not. It was an excellent idea and if Entreri had been a bigger man, it might have worked. As it was, his lean frame was not possessed of sufficient weight to truly deter Koedrobo. The cold feel of a manacle slithered across the assassin's arm to surround his wrist. When it stilled, he neither heard nor felt the sound of a bolt sliding home or iron tumblers turning over in a lock.

"Shhh," Terthus said again, his feminine voice at great odds with his thick jaw and deep set eyes. "Stop this nonsense and talk with me a moment. Or… I'll just kill you. At least give me the satisfaction of hearing your voice. I would hate to only know that interesting growl you gave me."

Sorely confused and beginning to become nauseous from the spinning room, Entreri decided that even if he did manage to kill Koedrobo, he wouldn't be able to get back to Calimport in the shape he was in. He remained still, torso suspended over the floor from the length of his arm. There had to be a way to reverse the spell the mage had cast on him.

"Let's start with why you're here," the man's lovely, and obviously stolen, voice continued. Smooth fingers continued to try, without satisfaction, to force the dagger from Entreri's iron grip. "Who sent you?"

Conversation had never been Entreri's strong suit. He wasn't a bad liar when he needed to be and he was a skilled hand at avoiding problematic subjects when they arose. As disoriented as he was, the killer grasped at a story that suddenly seemed bizarrely plausible.

"Listen closely, Koedrobo," Entreri spat, forcing his voice to remain steady, "we know what you've been up to and my guild isn't going to overlook it any longer. You're a thief and you are unaffiliated with any guild. I'm here to demand your allegiance to my guild, payment of back duties, and several of your specimens as a cut of your action."

Dondon would be proud. Dondon would be more convincing. Entreri swore to himself Dondon would hear nothing about the incident if—_when_ he got back to Calimport.

The assassin took the wizard's lack of immediate response as stunned silence. There was a pause in pressure on the assassin's tightly clenched hand that seemed to verify his assumption. Rather than wait on the man's answer, Entreri began to test his limitations.

He closed his eyes to see if it would help stop the spinning room. In blackness the wild spinning took on new, more intense proportions forcing the assassin's eyes to snap open in irritation. He wasn't entirely sure he was going to be able to continue hanging limply without getting violently sick.

"A shame," Terthus finally replied, "your voice is really nothing special."

The assassin found the answer baffling, but replied with deep sarcasm. "You may never fully appreciate how damaging I find your censure."

"Ah," the voice thief responded, "but very suited to dry repartee. Now, if you are here to demand my allegiance, why did you attack me?"

"You began a spell," Entreri returned. "I was defending myself."

It was strange to hear a markedly feminine voice laughing in conjunction with Terthus' masculine features. The hand left Entreri's dagger, instead snagging the material covering his face.

"You were trying to kill me," the mage corrected. He tugged one end of the cloth free and undid the turban ungently. The circular motion transported Entreri's vertigo to all new depths, making him almost unbearably nauseous. He barely registered the feel of the head cloth completely falling away; his head felt even more like it was in the middle of a powerful dust devil.

"But that's not particularly important," Terthus went on. He lifted Entreri's scarf up to his face to stem the tide of blood the assassin's dagger had released from the man's lip. When next he spoke, his stolen voice was slightly muffled. "Release the dagger and have a civil conversation with me and I'll consider talking to you about this guild's ridiculous demands."

Entreri wasn't about to release his hold on the dagger. He felt disturbingly helpless; every move he made the vertigo worse. He couldn't get his bearings, could only trust gravity to point him down. "Restore my balance and I'll release the dagger."

Koedrobo responded with an inelegant clucking noise. "I have no intention of keeping it. I have one similar in looks, but far more useful in nature. If you survive my interest, I'll return your blade to you. Must we do things the hard way?"

The stubborn man wanted to assert some semblance of control on the situation by snarling 'yes,' but then he heard the pleasant voice intoning strange mumbling, an almost-tune, that preceded magical attacks. Entreri's perfectly honed muscles tensed through their bruises and swellings. If the wizard was going to cast more spells, it only meant he had fewer to use when the killer at last defeated the vertigo.

At the climax of the casting a single pure note pierced the air. Entreri had made a concerted effort to learn a few notes before embarking on his journey across the desert, but this one held no resemblance to what he knew. The immediate result was uncanny: the dagger began vibrating in response to the sound. In fact, many of the lock picks on his person as well as a hidden blade sheathed in his boot vibrated in answer.

As the dagger's vibration picked up, it began to emit a low note of its own. The faster it shook, the higher pitched the key. Entreri wasn't certain what would happen when the dagger's note matched the mage's piercing whine, but from what he'd read in Koedrobo's texts, he had an unpleasant idea. Just as it began to sing as one with the mage's spell, Entreri attempted to slide it across the work bench at Terthus.

The dagger began the journey in one piece, but as its keening became undistinguishable from the magical note hanging in the air, the once fine blade began to crack. Entreri heard, rather than saw, the sudden jangle of notes that announced the shattering of his dagger. The pieces left the table and clattered to the floor in unpleasant defeat. At his wrist, metal pieces were slithering among the folds of his sleeve and quietly slipping onto the stone floor.

"Now, why don't we talk?"

"It would be easier to talk," the assassin relented, switching tactics now he was almost weaponless, "if I wasn't on the verge of purging."

"Agreed," Terthus soothed, finding an unarmed and manacled intruder less threatening. He released the spell that had surgically attacked the assassin's inner ears.

Entreri's relief wasn't quite complete when he felt the strange sensation of movement within his ear, but the slow stop of the terrible spinning helped his frame of mind considerably.

Dark eyes glanced quickly around the room, taking new stock of his situation and possibilities of escape. He was interested in the window the workbench pointed toward, but saw no immediate use for it. The detritus of his dagger was out of his reach and the remains of his steel lock picks were too small to be of much use. Observing the manacle locking his wrist to the table, the frustrated killer saw no visible lock. This, too, was an annoyance, but he didn't let the growing stock of difficulties affect his mind.

His first move was to locate the piece of wax LaValle had prepared for him. It was easy to find, lying on the floor among the bits and pieces of his lock picks. Loath to alert the voice thief to the unimpressive lump of material, Entreri glanced back up at Koedrobo.

The voice thief was of average height, which put him over Entreri's head even if the assassin had been standing tall. He wore the typical styles of a desert mage, but without the ornamentation. Instead of costly ornaments, the man's neutral colored garb was cut of a high grade of silk. Entreri supposed this had more to do with how it sounded as the man moved rather than any real interest in wealth, for Terthus was not highly groomed or fashionably coifed.

His light hazel eyes and silvering black hair did not mark him as extraordinary in looks, though his hairless face seemed something of an oddity in a land where mages seemed obsessed with what little facial growth they could manage. Even LaValle would have been better off without the scraggly beard he kept. Extraordinary or not, the man's intelligent eyes were on the assassin as the killer carefully masked palming the small piece of wax by laying his free hand over it to push himself upright again.

After studying Entreri for a moment, Terthus began what the assassin knew to be an interrogation on the topic of the mage's myopic interest. Typical mage, atypical discipline. "You must be a heartless man to have made it through the desert. Didn't you feel the fear? The instinctual urge to quit the area as soon as possible?"

The voice thief's questioning played entirely to Entreri's advantage. "I felt something, but it wasn't fear." He responded honestly, satisfied to buy time to formulate a new way to kill his mark.

"You are a fascinating specimen of humanity," Terthus remarked in turn, his expression openly intrigued. It was the last look on the strange man's face that Entreri wanted to see in context with an almost seductive woman's voice. Revulsion rose in his throat, but he attributed it to the earlier vertigo.

"Really."

"Yes, you are the first person I've had make it through a defense that attacks on an instinctual level." The incongruence of the appealing feminine voice only further accentuated the surreal nature of the conversation. "What you reacted to outside was an augmented blanket of noise at the same frequency as the human scream. I combined it with other layers of sound that reduce the mind's capacity to actually realize it is hearing anything at all. If you felt no fear, what did you experience?"

If he had not struggled through several of the nearly incomprehensible texts his mark had produced, Entreri would not have known what the mage was talking about. It galled him that his studies had only effectively prepared him to be conversant on the subject. It further bothered him that he suddenly had an answer to the strange impressions he'd had coming into the tower's shadow.

"I recalled times when I had heard screaming," Entreri remarked obliquely. "Nothing more."

Not just any screaming, but the kind of agonized manipulations of sound that ripped from horrified and despairing throats. Unconsciously, he understood the difference, but he gave it no thought; there was a window nearby, nothing on the table, glass cases with bottles…

"Nothing more?" Koedrobo's female voice pressed, making his interest more than obvious.

Entreri shook his head, pretending to think harder about the question, but in reality taking stock of the equipment he could still feel on his person. A few lock picks were still at his wrist, none of his daggers were an option, if he could lure the mage in range, there was the garotte stowed under his belt. "I don't recall anything else right now. Perhaps you understand the effect violent collisions have on a person's memory?"

The mage reacted smugly to the note of sneering sarcasm the assassin didn't bother to suppress. "You do well to remind me. I have a spell to draw out hidden voices. I usually reserve it for people who easily bend under the weight of foolish secrets. If you have such useful hidden voices, perhaps I shall have no need to kill you."

The assassin snorted derisively. "I am a member of a thieves guild; I assure you, my sins are too many to sort through." Internally, though, he was concerned the foolish mage would soon learn his identity, which Terthus hadn't thought to ask.

Shrugging his thin shoulders, Koedrobo began picking at the scarf he'd confiscated from Entreri in order to staunch the blood from his cut lip. "I will find the most hidden voices; they are always of the most use and the only ones we will hear."

The mage's pale hand plucked a long ebony strand of hair from the scarf and held it up like a trophy before the assassin's gray eyes. "Are you wishing you could chew off your hand right now?"

The severe stare the deadly assassin leveled on the man was far more of an answer than Koedrobo expected. In the dark depths of Entreri's flat gaze he saw death; cold, unfeeling, and inevitable death. Were the voice thief a man more interested in the evil eye rather than the magic of sound, he might have thought to take no chances and end the killer right there. But Terthus did not know death; he was not experienced in ending a life through physical means.

Taking the hair, the voice thief began his casting. Entreri made good on the man's complete distraction and turned to the glass cases lined up on the inner wall. The bottles inside one were topped in red glass. The red stoppers caught his eye and gave him a small amount of hope. Red was almost always a cue for dangerous objects, though he knew it could also stand for passion. He narrowed his eyes, searching for the labels. Perhaps there would be some symbol of danger beyond the red glass tops.

The disciplined assassin's jaw nearly dropped at what he saw. The first label he saw, hand written in perfectly drawn lines, was clearly marked: _Siren_. In Calishite. Calishite was an important trade tongue and Oberon's scryer did not read it? It was then the depth of Entreri's mistake hit him. It was as Pasha Basadoni had told him a few years prior. _Is it not the hired hand's duty to expect information to be faulty and often misleading?_

Even as he recalled his mentor's voice, Entreri felt a tangible tug in his head. The feeling was acutely bizarre, because it was not a true physical sensation. He had a sense that it somehow bubbled up from the depths of his self and passed by his recollection of the pasha's words. The assassin stilled, held in place by morbid curiosity. Would he soon hear Pasha Pook hiring him to slaughter one of the Sultan's nephews? He hardly feared the voice thief knowing that, beyond the revelation of his identity. Surely Koedrobo knew of Artemis Entreri and would become more guarded when he realized just who he had manacled to his work bench.

But the sounds that suddenly whispered into the air were not at all what he expected. Entreri barely heard the soft scuff of sandals on tile and a man's even voice speaking in Calishite.

"_Don't you want to be good for your father?"_

The voice was vaguely familiar, but Entreri was completely convinced it was not his own. He would never say anything as bizarre, barring it was some off color pass phrase.

"_No,"_ came a subdued, stubbornly defiant child's voice. Immediately following the perfect sound of rebellion was the unremarkable reply of a burgeoning scuffle.

His first impulse was to smirk at the voice thief's obvious mistake. The voices were not very clear, nor were they recognizable. Entreri was sure if they came from him, it was from an unremembered dream or some clinical observation in his early street years. He simply didn't recall watching some stupid boy being disciplined for irritating someone he couldn't defeat.

But then he heard another disembodied voice and the impression of the familiar face from outside the tower came back to him. _"Keep his head down; I don't want to have to explain another bite at the baths."_

"_You can say it was nothing to waste a prayer on."_

The sound of the struggle suddenly escalated into a renewed fury.

That was what Entreri remembered. He remembered the flurry of fists and feet in a struggle never won. A bolt of fury lanced through the assassin's body, increasing his heart rate, flushing his skin with scalding blood. His lifeless gray eyes blazed with an inferno of unmitigated hatred when he brought the awful gaze to meet the mark's image.

Koedrobo was not looking at him; his eyes were closed in order to better hear the revolting scene of a boy receiving traveling papers through every layer of Hell.

"_Mother! Get off! _Get off!_ I'll kill you! I'll--! "_

Entreri didn't hear anything. An instant before his heart had lit a demonic conflagration within him. Now his mind was dumping ice from the frozen wastes of his soul directly into his veins. He had work to do. Work. He had a mark to kill, crystal bottles to collect, an escape to effect, and control to reclaim. There was no room for sentimentality or emotion; there was only the deadly work at which he excelled and kept him the master of his own fate.

Without thought, he lifted his free wrist up to his face and withdrew the lock pick with the most mass with his teeth. He dropped the implement into the air and plucked it out of freefall in the next instant. Then, the cold-blooded killer turned to eye the glass cabinet. All he wanted was one word of two possibilities. One bottle would do. Chances were not good that either label would be seen, but he didn't care.

Meanwhile, the voice thief's face had drained of blood, suddenly realizing what he was hearing. His hazel eyes opened wide in shock and his hands cut through the air in a motion all Calishites recognized as a 'no deal' gesture. The audible scene ceased as a sudden shriek of pain, rage, and despair filled the room. He was a selfish man, yes, and quite comfortable with his vices, but not a man that took lightly the kind of horror he'd brought snaking into his outer work room's air.

The voice thief knew neither of the adult voices bore much resemblance to the voice of the man he'd manacled to one of his work benches. Unless the man had witnessed the foul act and stood by doing nothing, the child's unbroken voice could be his. Koedrobo had heard many hidden voices in his career, but most spoke of back room deals and back stabbing secrets. He couldn't understand why a thief, and most likely a murderer, would suppress this voice more than any betrayal or bloodletting. Moreover, he earnestly did not like the sound of the situation at all. He was not moved to sympathy for the thief, he was disturbed on behalf of a long destroyed child.

The few moments he spent trying to process the disembodied scene were commendable, but ultimately the very thing the assassin needed to make good his short list of needs. Due to the nature of the manacle around his wrist, he could not use any of his lock picks to free the captured hand. Even if he dislocated his thumb, the iron was too snug around his wrist in his weakened condition. The serrated edges would help him tear free, but he knew his limitations and recognized he would need an added push.

Acting as if he owned the room, Entreri twisted his wrist inside the metal restraint to better facilitate his rise onto the work bench. He crouched there, pulling experimentally at the wickedly edged clamp. A minor pain burned a bracelet of red around his wrist, promising brighter jewels of agony should he continue his resistance.

The bold move put Terthus back on guard; he called to mind the limited selection of useful spells he had left. There was a repetitive incantation that lead to hypnosis, a tune with a beat that enslaved the heart; forcing it to beat as fast or slow as desired. There was nothing with an immediate effect available, but the dark man's captured wrist placated any nervous impulses.

"Have you decided to be more helpful by lying down? Please, relax." His stolen voice sounded full of a strange combination of soothing and menacing tones. "You are a specimen of strange possibilities and I think I will not incur your guild's anger by killing you."

The assassin's head bobbed in a nod, but it was in answer to his own calculations. He was on a level with the wide window, halfway between it and the inner wall. Looking back at the voice thief, Entreri masked replacing the wax in his ear by running his hand through his hair, freeing the raven strands from his face for a moment.

"Tell me one thing before I kill you," the calmly serious assassin remarked. "Why do you only use Calishite?"

"Kill me?" Musical laughter broke through the room, but was helpless against the mounting tension. Tension that seemed to radiate from the killer's battered, but ready, body.

Entreri was immune to the incongruent laughter coming from the voice thief's broad face. He only watched the man's face in order to read his lips. He was vaguely interested in the answer, but more interested in taunting him.

Finally, Koedrobo shook his head in honest exasperation. He couldn't imagine why his prisoner would suddenly be so interested in such a random thing. The question seemed harmless enough and it was something he was interested in and, therefore, eager to explain. "There is an inherent poetry in the language that might be connected with the efreet rulers of long ago and an undeniable flowing beauty in the script. What better language to mirror the magnificence of sound?"

"Is all sound magnificent?" A mocking smirk was already on the killer's lips. The wizard had failed to pick up on Entreri's hint and failed, also, to understand the subtle shift that had occurred in their relationship.

"Of course," the man answered immediately, eyebrows drawing down and together in belated suspicion. Still, he could not imagine a battered and manacled man could present him any sort of danger.

The wicked smile and its arrogance melted from Entreri's face, to be replaced by deadly seriousness. He brought up the lock pick for Terthus' perusal; an obvious echo of how the voice thief had earlier presented Entreri with a strand of hair. "Even the sound of breaking glass?"

The voice thief shook his head in confusion. He did not understand what the killer was getting at in the slightest. Not until Entreri snorted in disgust and turned toward the case filled with red-topped bottles.

The skilled assassin brought his arm up to make the nearly impossible throw. He knew the lock pick, though it was heavy for such an implement because it was used for heavy tumblers, was not heavy enough to break through the glass on its own merits. The throw would have to capitalize not just on the force he could lend it, but on perfect trajectory. If his aim deviated even slightly, he wouldn't have another chance.

Just like the day he had killed an older youth with nothing more than a perfectly aimed stone, Entreri had to be perfect. That stone hadn't the mass it needed either, but the precision was there then, too. Entreri raised his arm and counted on the elasticity and power of his youthful muscles to buy his freedom and the wizard's death.

Faster than Terthus could speak a spell or grasp futilely at one of the wands inside his robes, the iron lock pick shot toward the case. The man had warded his cabinets to protect them against volatile sound, but he had never thought to ward them against physical attack. His heart leapt into his throat; he was momentarily paralyzed with apprehension.

To Entreri's intense satisfaction, the lock pick popped through the case with such precision, that it left nothing more than a coin-sized hole in its wake. Furthermore, it cracked into the very bottle he'd desired to shatter… only to bounce off the container with enough force to rebound back into the glass case's door and spread a spider web of hairline fractures from the point it impacted. Seeing the fractures, Entreri grit his teeth and held his braced position.

A sigh of intense relief filled Koedrobo's lungs and released as laughter in the pleasure of a disaster suddenly diverted. The bottle that had been struck fell over, tapping its glass shelf in a faint sound of protest, and rolled to the side, cracking against the crystal container next to it. Terthus walked past the assassin, intent to see what bottle had been hit and to remove it directly lest the bottle was damaged.

As he neared the case, he noted the sound of tinkling glass followed by a low keening beginning to pierce the air. He frowned minutely and squinted at the fallen bottle. The first thing he spied was the growing fractures spreading across the bottle's crystal face. The next thing he noted, to his full horror, was his own meticulous script: _Mandrake._ The last thing he saw was the crystal bottle's body blasting apart. Entreri had been hoping for _Banshee_, for his ear protection had come from one, but had been forced to settle on his second choice instead.

The room was immediately awash in violent motion and terrible vibration, but Entreri heard very little commotion. He had one foot braced on the workbench, the other on the manacle holding him in place. His thumb was already dislocated and his hand positioned to avoid the worst of the eventual carnage when he saw Koedrobo's body headed straight for him.

There was no time to even think of cursing his luck; the assassin simply readjusted his calculations. The wave of force hit him just as he threw his own weight back, timing his body to move with the concussion as much as possible. In response to the sudden straightening of his legs, the blinding hot pain of tearing flesh shot up his arm from his hand. It was a strong reaction, but it didn't seem it would be enough to free him. Fortunately, the impact of the voice thief provided the necessary force needed to peel muscle back in a wet tearing characterized by unthinkable agony. Entreri's unintentional bellow of pain was swallowed whole by the mandrake scream.

Knocked backward as he had planned, the assassin barely managed to twist his body to miss the window sill and slam squarely through the shoddy metal gate. He was propelled into the embrace of the rapidly cooling air shrouding the desert night. Gravity delivered him quickly from the mandrake's scream and ushered him quickly toward the distant desert floor.

Impacting with sand at the end of his fall was every bit as brutally punishing as enduring the voice thief's initial sound attacks. All air fled his lungs despite his catlike ability to land in a manner that would minimize the inevitable damage. After rolling down to the bottom of the tower's sand dune and coming to rest in a small stand of cacti and rocks, Entreri found himself again dazed and momentarily incapable of movement. For several torturously long seconds he writhed without control, gasping hideously as his body fought to pull oxygen into his abused body.

At last, he lay quietly, half covered with sand and tried to pull his thoughts together in order to assess the damage he'd endured. It didn't take him long to realize he was dying. That much seemed certain. It was not the first time he'd had such a thought, but it was not laced with child-like relief as it had been over a decade ago. Back then he'd known little about the complexities of the human body; he had assumed it was pain that killed, not the injury itself.

Lying entangled amongst the prickly cacti, one leg half buried in sand, a smile came to his cracked lips that was equal parts self-deprecation and sarcasm. He finally noticed his arm was thrown across the wheezing form of his dying mark. Entreri wanted to at least slit the man's throat before he also expired. Unfortunately, his weaponry had been destroyed in the tower or lost in the violent expulsion from the window.

All hope was not lost. Entreri remembered the man's reference to a dagger not unlike his own. Hardly stirring, the assassin began patting Koedrobo down, hand clumsily flailing against the man's equally abused form. The assassin mused that he would have been dead sooner had not the wizard decided to go to the glass case instead of killing his prisoner outright. That kept the quirked smile on Entreri's lips, even though he knew the blood flecking them was not from where they were split.

His questing hand hit a wand, but the assassin moved on. Not only was he unsure what kind it was or how to use it, he knew he would derive the most satisfaction from opening up the man's throat to the night. After a few more tries that began to resemble slaps rather than pats, Entreri's knuckles connected with a cloth covered hilt. It was difficult for his numbing fingers to untangle the weapon from the mage's robes and then slide it from the sheath, but he had nothing better to do. The night was too dim to see much of the dagger, but no matter how dull, a pointed end was all he needed.

It never ceased to amuse the assassin that if he were to lose his mind completely and forget his daggers on the streets of Calimport, some fool who didn't know the first thing about sharpening a stick could be counted on to have a weapon on his person. He'd killed innumerable marks by making them victims of their own blades.

"A wizard shouldn't rely on a weapon he doesn't know how to use," the dying assassin advised, moving the blade up to the soft hollow of Koedrobo's struggling throat, just below the larynx. It was the softest place of entrance to the man's major artery, windpipe, and, if he was lucky, spinal cord. As he paused there, he noted blood was trickling from the voice thief's ears and nose; the mandrake's voice was the true killer; not the fall nor the dagger that would hurry death along.

The assassin removed one of the pieces of wax to hear the sound of a woman's mewling whimper as he raised his arm and stabbed the deadly implement down. Entreri took great satisfaction in the easy cut of the weapon; it sank through flesh with an ease that spoke of unnatural sharpness. That satisfaction faded as he felt a corresponding shudder in the weapon and a strong jolt rocked his broken body.

When next the assassin opened his eyes, he was shocked to see glittering stars beyond his dark lashes and the progress the sliver of moon had made across the sky. He'd been out for several hours. Despite again removing one of pieces of banshee earwax, he had no feeling of tension as he had previously in the day. He wondered when the voice thief's bizarre spell had ended. How long would take for deadly animals to move back into the area or scavengers and looters to head for the tower? Could he survive long enough to find out?

His body was stiffening with cold, which he found preferable than stiffening in death. His hand was still wrapped around the dagger he'd plunged into Koedrobo. It was moving slightly, as was his arm as it lay on the corpse. It didn't take him long to realize that the voice thief's whole body was moving.

He moved his head slightly to get a better look at the man's corpse and made out the moonlit form of a pair of young wild dogs scavenging the body. His question had been answered before he'd even posed it. They had already laid open the dead man's stomach and painted their muzzles red with blood. Moved with disgust at the new way he would be forced to die, Entreri sighed. Wild dogs usually moved in packs; he was going to get ripped apart rather than quietly expiring in the sand.

Both dogs froze at the assassin's exhalation, but Entreri was uninterested in waiting for the inevitable attack. He gathered his strength, more than he thought he had any right to, and pulled the dagger from the mage's throat. He reversed the blade and in the same motion, drove it into the closest dog's chest before it could react. The animal shrieked as another jolt traveled down the blade and into Entreri's arm. This time he remained aware and felt the dog's life channeled into his body to charge another round of healing.

The assassin was amazed by the dagger's unusual property. His eyes lit with wicked satisfaction as the other dog leapt at his throat. Yes, Entreri laughed to himself, wild dogs usually traveled in packs. The sooner the others arrived, the sooner he could retrieve what he needed from the tower and return to the Calimport.

* * *

_For the record, I like Alzadea's dagger origin mo' betta, but I'd already plotted this out before hand. Thanks to Lessie and Alzadea for reviews. I always like getting them._


End file.
